Analysis of Bifurcation – Telangana’s Perspective

We regularly see MPs of the present AP state complaining regularly about the way ‘Irrational Bifurcation’ of United AP had taken place during Parliament Sessions. While all of us agree that the AP assembly had passed a resolution against the Telangana Bill, on account of greater strength of Seemandhra MLAs (175 out of 294 compared to 119 of Telangana’s) in 2013, Constitutionally, the bill could be passed in Parliament even if not agreed to by the legislative assembly (as per Article 3 of the Constitution).

Now, Let us look at the pros and cons of the bifurcation with respect to Telangana.

Socially speaking, the farmers of Andhra Pradesh, especially in the Krishna-Godavari Basin are well of due to fertile soil compared to their Telangana counterparts. The bifurcation gives the Telangana farmers more share of the State budget. This I feel will reduce the rate of farmer suicides.

Other than Hyderabad, the educational level of the people of Telangana is quite lower. I would be happy if the State government shows more focus as this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rectify this anomaly.

Politically, everyone would be aware that the Seemandhra region dominated the politics, barring the lone PM from erstwhile AP, Shri PV Narasimha Rao who was from Telangana. The people of Telangana felt that its specifically because of this, that successive governments focused only on social and economic development of coastal AP.

Its no wonder that Hyderabad is the lone spot of gold in the otherwise backward and dusty region of Telangana. This is reflected in the 2014 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections where all national parties were rejected and a thumping victory was given to a notable regional party (more specifically, Telangana centric party). The people are finally realising ‘Self-Rule’.

While everyone might complain that Telangana has presented a surplus budget whereas AP is in severe crunch of funds, I would like to point out that, the surplus budget is only because of the vast service sector based at Hyderabad. Hyderabad has many Pharma, Software firms located which contribute to the huge revenue. The rest of the state is extremely backward. Compared to this AP has many growth centres such as Vijayawada, Vishakapatnam, Guntur, Tirupati, Kakinada and so on. On the other hand, Warangal can be called developed to a certain extent.

Other towns such as Ramagundam, Karimnagar, Adilabad, Khamam are nowhere developed as that of towns of AP. Any layman passing through the Chennai-Delhi rail route can vouch for this based on his observations from inside the train. Like the erstwhile AP where Hyderabad was the lone growth pole in Telangana (the others being Vijayawada, Vishakapatnam and Guntur of Coastal region), I sincerely hope that Warangal, Adilabad, Karimnagar, Khammam develop on par with Hyderabad.

Task before us

The main task before us is to bridge trust deficit between the people of the 2 States and ensure the safety of natives of AP living in Telangana and simultaneously of the natives of Telangana living in AP. Both should become partners in each other’s development and respect each other as both belong to and profess the Idea of India. I sincerely hope that the bifurcation will address the regional disparity and bring in inclusive growth coupled with improvement of social indicators such as health, literacy, sanitation, electricity and so on for the baby state, Telangana.